Back in ’82 this little movie came out about a boy who found an alien in his backyard. It was called E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. Ever heard of it? He phoned home and whatnot? This was basically the movie that solidified Steven Spielberg as being not just a guy who was making great movies everybody liked, but as being the most important director in the world: the guy. When you see that Amblin Entertainment logo you know you’re in for a certain kind of movie designed to appeal to everyone, and it’s an image from E.T. that gets the job done. Russkies came out in ’87, when the outbreak of Spielberg imitator movies about kids going on adventures was in full swing. This one is about a group of kids who find a Russian naval officer who has washed up on the coast of their Florida town. Even Spielberg knockoffs as bad as Mac and Me still get mentioned when people start talking about the good old days of the 80s, when family programming was king, but I’ve never in my life heard anyone bring up Russkies. Considering two of the main three kids in this movie are a young Joaquin Phoenix (pre-hobo beard) and Peter Billingsley (pretty much the king of 80s nostalgia), how is this movie completely forgotten?

Buried deep within this sentence (Doritos are delicious) is an advertisement. Did you catch it? You probably didn’t because it was so subtly subliminal, but that’s exactly how product placement has worked for a century to varying degrees of success. After all, there’s a thin line between using real-life products in a film to create a sense of verisimilitude and using them to promote the product in question. Where that line is drawn is up to each person. One person might see a kid reading “National Geographic” in It’s a Wonderful Life and think it’s quaintly appropriate while another person might find it craven and conspicuous. To the same extent, different film productions have delivered brands with means ranging from the slyness of near-imperceptibility to almost Doritos-Scorchin’-Habanero-Flavor levels of obviousness. It’s far from new, and even though sold items have sneaked their way into movies for almost one hundred years, there’s been an explosion in recent decades, seeing a new revenue stream for studios and a new annoyance for film fans.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a wild summer romp disguised as a prestige flick. We toss together some of the news that your brain needs to hold most tightly to for fear of losing it forever. Do you dare know what can’t be unknown? Since it’s going to be a bizarre (fiercely sexual) post tonight, we start off with the innocent pleasure of shoes. Custom painted movie shoes to be specific. For full disclosure, yes, PeregrinePaints over at Etsy is a friend of the site, but who cares? Her stuff is very cool, the work speaks for itself, and you can dictate exactly what you want painted on your kicks. Not a bad deal, especially for the super-fan who can’t understand why Nike hasn’t produced as an official El Topo sneaker yet.

There’s no real reason to even write an intro here. Chances are if you saw Super 8 already it made you strangely hungry for Reese’s Pieces. This story about an alien whose face was designed to look like Albert Einstein and Carl Sandburg gave birth to a pug (not a joke) is beyond iconic. It’s even literally iconic in the fact that its main image has become the symbol of Amblin entertainment. We may not have a trailer for Night Skies, but we’ve got one for E.T. If Poltergeist represented the dark side of suburban life, this represented the (incredibly frightening) lighter side.

Every week, Landon Palmer and Cole Abaius log on to their favorite chat client of 1996 as MrSmith1939 and 2BorNot2B in order to discuss some topical topic of interest. This week, the two daydream the ultimate reboot – an entire era of filmmaking brought back to life through the lens of modern directors. What styles should we bring back and homage? It is a good idea to let nostalgia drive us artistically? Will people in 30 years be harkening back to the Abramsian style?

What is Movie News After Dark? This is a question that I am almost never asked, but I will answer it for you anyway. Movie News After Dark is FSR’s newest late-night secretion, a column dedicated to all of the news stories that slip past our daytime editorial staff and make it into my curiously chubby RSS ‘flagged’ box. It will (but is not guaranteed to) include relevant movie news, links to insightful commentary and other film-related shenanigans. I may also throw in a link to something TV-related here or there. It will also serve as my place of record for being both charming and sharp-witted, but most likely I will be neither of the two. I write this stuff late at night, what do you expect?

Paul is an alien from outer space who likes to moon people, use his invisibility powers to show up randomly naked, and laugh just like Seth Rogen. There’s a new trailer for the film out today, and even though it says nothing about the exact quest the alien and his new spaced-out friends (played by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost) are going on, it’s still a shiny example of some solid comedy. Plus, there’s at least three major science fiction film references just in the trailer alone.

There have already been a surprising number of modern sequels and remakes made from the movies of 1982. Films like The Thing and Conan The Barbarian have remakes coming down the pipe while the Rocky franchise has been continued, and The Dark Crystal and Mad Max franchises have both been promised a latter-day continuation. There’s a lot of rich material there, and this weekend sees Tron: Legacy come out almost three decades after the film it’s following. Of course TRON deserves a sequel because of its large cult appeal and the potential expansiveness that the universe always held. However, there are several other films from 1982 that may even be more worthy to get the way-too-late-in-the-game sequel treatment. Here’s six of ‘em.

We’ve taken you behind the scenes of Cowboys & Aliens and into the mind of director Jon Favreau, and today we dig deeper into the films that the filmmakers talked most about during the set visit. Cowboys & Aliens may be the only Steven Spielberg film that Steven Spielberg isn’t directing. From the conversations I shared with Jon Favreau and co-screenwriter Bob Orci on the set of the film, a select group of movies kept returning to the fold as titles that had a lot to do with the shaping of tone and storytelling. A theme quickly emerged. While Executive Producer Steven Spielberg was busy inviting the filmmakers to private screenings of new prints of The Searchers, the filmmakers were drawing on their childhood love of Amblin and the films of Spielberg himself. Still, even though it lacks diversity in the directorial column, this is one seriously formidable list of inspirational films.

An Irish-American named Sean Thornton (John Wayne) leaves his broken boxing life behind for Ireland to take back his family farm, he meets and falls for Mary Kate Danaher (Maureen O’Hara).

It’s okay to admit you cry once in a while guys. As long as you beat a gorilla to death immediately afterward, you can still be considered manly. Luckily, there’s a few flicks out there that let us cry at will – here’s ten of ‘em.